These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice.

They are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system.

Their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain torrent, deeply discoloured by a Republican element.
It must be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans.

In the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors, even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed race, the children of robbers and murderers, possessing the fruits of their fathers' crimes.' 'With them,' says Dr.Lingard, 'the Saxon was no better than a pagan bearing the name of a Christian.

They refused to return his salutation, to join in prayer with him in the church, to sit with him at the same table, to abide with him under the same roof.
The remnant of his meals and the food over which he had made the sign of the cross they threw to their dogs or swine; the cup out of which he had drunk they scoured with sand, as if it had contracted defilement from his lips.' It is not the Celtic memory only that is tenacious of national wrong.
The Saxon was doomed to drink to the dregs the same bitter cup which he administered so unmercifully to the Briton.